Zlib

You can access this module with:

const zlib = require('zlib');

This provides bindings to Gzip/Gunzip, Deflate/Inflate, and DeflateRaw/InflateRaw classes. Each class takes the same options, and is a readable/writable Stream.

Examples

Compressing or decompressing a file can be done by piping an fs.ReadStream into a zlib stream, then into an fs.WriteStream.

const gzip = zlib.createGzip();
const fs = require('fs');
const inp = fs.createReadStream('input.txt');
const out = fs.createWriteStream('input.txt.gz');

inp.pipe(gzip).pipe(out);

Compressing or decompressing data in one step can be done by using the convenience methods.

const input = '.................................';
zlib.deflate(input, (err, buffer) => {
  if (!err) {
    console.log(buffer.toString('base64'));
  } else {
    // handle error
  }
});

const buffer = new Buffer('eJzT0yMAAGTvBe8=', 'base64');
zlib.unzip(buffer, (err, buffer) => {
  if (!err) {
    console.log(buffer.toString());
  } else {
    // handle error
  }
});

To use this module in an HTTP client or server, use the accept-encoding on requests, and the content-encoding header on responses.

Note: these examples are drastically simplified to show the basic concept. Zlib encoding can be expensive, and the results ought to be cached. See Memory Usage Tuning for more information on the speed/memory/compression tradeoffs involved in zlib usage.

// client request example
const zlib = require('zlib');
const http = require('http');
const fs = require('fs');
const request = http.get({ host: 'izs.me',
                         path: '/',
                         port: 80,
                         headers: { 'accept-encoding': 'gzip,deflate' } });
request.on('response', (response) => {
  var output = fs.createWriteStream('izs.me_index.html');

  switch (response.headers['content-encoding']) {
    // or, just use zlib.createUnzip() to handle both cases
    case 'gzip':
      response.pipe(zlib.createGunzip()).pipe(output);
      break;
    case 'deflate':
      response.pipe(zlib.createInflate()).pipe(output);
      break;
    default:
      response.pipe(output);
      break;
  }
});

// server example
// Running a gzip operation on every request is quite expensive.
// It would be much more efficient to cache the compressed buffer.
const zlib = require('zlib');
const http = require('http');
const fs = require('fs');
http.createServer((request, response) => {
  var raw = fs.createReadStream('index.html');
  var acceptEncoding = request.headers['accept-encoding'];
  if (!acceptEncoding) {
    acceptEncoding = '';
  }

  // Note: this is not a conformant accept-encoding parser.
  // See http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.3
  if (acceptEncoding.match(/\bdeflate\b/)) {
    response.writeHead(200, { 'content-encoding': 'deflate' });
    raw.pipe(zlib.createDeflate()).pipe(response);
  } else if (acceptEncoding.match(/\bgzip\b/)) {
    response.writeHead(200, { 'content-encoding': 'gzip' });
    raw.pipe(zlib.createGzip()).pipe(response);
  } else {
    response.writeHead(200, {});
    raw.pipe(response);
  }
}).listen(1337);

Memory Usage Tuning

From zlib/zconf.h, modified to node.js's usage:

The memory requirements for deflate are (in bytes):

(1 << (windowBits+2)) +  (1 << (memLevel+9))

that is: 128K for windowBits=15 + 128K for memLevel = 8 (default values) plus a few kilobytes for small objects.

For example, if you want to reduce the default memory requirements from 256K to 128K, set the options to:

{ windowBits: 14, memLevel: 7 }

Of course this will generally degrade compression (there's no free lunch).

The memory requirements for inflate are (in bytes)

1 << windowBits

that is, 32K for windowBits=15 (default value) plus a few kilobytes for small objects.

This is in addition to a single internal output slab buffer of size chunkSize, which defaults to 16K.

The speed of zlib compression is affected most dramatically by the level setting. A higher level will result in better compression, but will take longer to complete. A lower level will result in less compression, but will be much faster.

In general, greater memory usage options will mean that node.js has to make fewer calls to zlib, since it'll be able to process more data in a single write operation. So, this is another factor that affects the speed, at the cost of memory usage.

Flushing

Calling .flush() on a compression stream will make zlib return as much output as currently possible. This may come at the cost of degraded compression quality, but can be useful when data needs to be available as soon as possible.

In the following example, flush() is used to write a compressed partial HTTP response to the client:

const zlib = require('zlib');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer((request, response) => {
  // For the sake of simplicity, the Accept-Encoding checks are omitted.
  response.writeHead(200, { 'content-encoding': 'gzip' });
  const output = zlib.createGzip();
  output.pipe(response);

  setInterval(() => {
    output.write(`The current time is ${Date()}\n`, () => {
      // The data has been passed to zlib, but the compression algorithm may
      // have decided to buffer the data for more efficient compression.
      // Calling .flush() will make the data available as soon as the client
      // is ready to receive it.
      output.flush();
    });
  }, 1000);
}).listen(1337);

Constants

All of the constants defined in zlib.h are also defined on require('zlib'). In the normal course of operations, you will not need to ever set any of these. They are documented here so that their presence is not surprising. This section is taken almost directly from the zlib documentation. See http://zlib.net/manual.html#Constants for more details.

Allowed flush values.

• zlib.Z_NO_FLUSH
• zlib.Z_PARTIAL_FLUSH
• zlib.Z_SYNC_FLUSH
• zlib.Z_FULL_FLUSH
• zlib.Z_FINISH
• zlib.Z_BLOCK
• zlib.Z_TREES

Return codes for the compression/decompression functions. Negative values are errors, positive values are used for special but normal events.

• zlib.Z_OK
• zlib.Z_STREAM_END
• zlib.Z_NEED_DICT
• zlib.Z_ERRNO
• zlib.Z_STREAM_ERROR
• zlib.Z_DATA_ERROR
• zlib.Z_MEM_ERROR
• zlib.Z_BUF_ERROR
• zlib.Z_VERSION_ERROR

Compression levels.

• zlib.Z_NO_COMPRESSION
• zlib.Z_BEST_SPEED
• zlib.Z_BEST_COMPRESSION
• zlib.Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION

Compression strategy.

• zlib.Z_FILTERED
• zlib.Z_HUFFMAN_ONLY
• zlib.Z_RLE
• zlib.Z_FIXED
• zlib.Z_DEFAULT_STRATEGY

The deflate compression method (the only one supported in this version).

• zlib.Z_DEFLATED

For initializing zalloc, zfree, opaque.

• zlib.Z_NULL

Class Options

Each class takes an options object. All options are optional.

Note that some options are only relevant when compressing, and are ignored by the decompression classes.

• flush (default: zlib.Z_NO_FLUSH)
• chunkSize (default: 16*1024)
• windowBits
• level (compression only)
• memLevel (compression only)
• strategy (compression only)
• dictionary (deflate/inflate only, empty dictionary by default)

See the description of deflateInit2 and inflateInit2 at http://zlib.net/manual.html#Advanced for more information on these.

Class: zlib.Deflate

Compress data using deflate.

Class: zlib.DeflateRaw

Compress data using deflate, and do not append a zlib header.

Class: zlib.Gunzip

Decompress a gzip stream.

Class: zlib.Gzip

Compress data using gzip.

Class: zlib.Inflate

Decompress a deflate stream.

Class: zlib.InflateRaw

Decompress a raw deflate stream.

Class: zlib.Unzip

Decompress either a Gzip- or Deflate-compressed stream by auto-detecting the header.

Class: zlib.Zlib

Not exported by the zlib module. It is documented here because it is the base class of the compressor/decompressor classes.

zlib.flush([kind], callback)

kind defaults to zlib.Z_FULL_FLUSH.

Flush pending data. Don't call this frivolously, premature flushes negatively impact the effectiveness of the compression algorithm.

Calling this only flushes data from the internal zlib state, and does not perform flushing of any kind on the streams level. Rather, it behaves like a normal call to .write(), i.e. it will be queued up behind other pending writes and will only produce output when data is being read from the stream.

zlib.params(level, strategy, callback)

Dynamically update the compression level and compression strategy. Only applicable to deflate algorithm.

zlib.reset()

Reset the compressor/decompressor to factory defaults. Only applicable to the inflate and deflate algorithms.

zlib.createDeflate(options)

Returns a new Deflate object with an options.

zlib.createDeflateRaw(options)

Returns a new DeflateRaw object with an options.

Note: An upgrade of zlib from 1.2.8 to 1.2.11 changed behavior when windowBits is set to 8 for raw deflate streams. zlib does not have a working implementation of an 8-bit Window for raw deflate streams and would automatically set windowBit to 9 if initially set to 8. Newer versions of zlib will throw an exception. This creates a potential DOS vector, and as such the behavior has been reverted in Node.js 8, 6, and 4. Node.js version 9 and higher will throw when windowBits is set to 8.

zlib.createGunzip(options)

Returns a new Gunzip object with an options.

zlib.createGzip(options)

Returns a new Gzip object with an options.

zlib.createInflate(options)

Returns a new Inflate object with an options.

zlib.createInflateRaw(options)

Returns a new InflateRaw object with an options.

zlib.createUnzip(options)

Returns a new Unzip object with an options.

Convenience Methods

All of these take a Buffer or string as the first argument, an optional second argument to supply options to the zlib classes and will call the supplied callback with callback(error, result).

Every method has a *Sync counterpart, which accept the same arguments, but without a callback.

zlib.deflate(buf[, options], callback)

zlib.deflateSync(buf[, options])

Compress a Buffer or string with Deflate.

zlib.deflateRaw(buf[, options], callback)

zlib.deflateRawSync(buf[, options])

Compress a Buffer or string with DeflateRaw.

zlib.gunzip(buf[, options], callback)

zlib.gunzipSync(buf[, options])

Decompress a Buffer or string with Gunzip.

zlib.gzip(buf[, options], callback)

zlib.gzipSync(buf[, options])

Compress a Buffer or string with Gzip.

zlib.inflate(buf[, options], callback)

zlib.inflateSync(buf[, options])

Decompress a Buffer or string with Inflate.

zlib.inflateRaw(buf[, options], callback)

zlib.inflateRawSync(buf[, options])

Decompress a Buffer or string with InflateRaw.

zlib.unzip(buf[, options], callback)

zlib.unzipSync(buf[, options])

Decompress a Buffer or string with Unzip.